California law

The Golden State's Promise to Retirees Puts at Risk the Other Promises It Makes to Its Citizens

If we can’t get rid of the California Rule, can we at least ditch the name?

The California Rule is the misleading moniker we’ve given to our state’s most troublesome legal precedent: that public employees are entitled to whatever pension benefits were in place when they started work. Pension benefits in California are so monumental that they might as well be set in the stone of El Capitan—they can never be cut, unless they are replaced with another benefit of equal value.